Beautiful Women
There are many sets showing beautiful young women, but few express the appreciation of feminine beauty quite as well as these tiles from Judy Wall Isphording. The phrases on the tiles are commonly used together to express the most beautiful of women. The top row are row 閉月羞花, Bi Yue Xin Hua, to "outshine the moon and put the flowers to shame", and is a reference to feminine beauty. It's suggested that the first two characters, Bi Yue, are taken from a poem by Cao Zhi (a real life descendent of Cao Cao who appears as the prime villain in the three Kingdoms stories and lived around 200AD), and the second two, Xin Hua, from a poem by the much later poet Li Bai, from around 700AD. The poems used the words to express female beauty. The bottom row are 沉魚落雁, Chen Yu Luo Yan. Somewhat literally this is 'to make fish sink and the geese alight'. This means something like 'female beauty captivates even the birds and beasts', or more simply "extreme beauty". This originated from the writings of Zhuangzi, an early philosopher from around 300BCE...see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi ...and extracting from a translation of his work, "Mao Qiang and Li Ji beautiful courtesans are what people consider beautiful, but if fish see them they will swim into the depths; if birds see them, they will fly away into the air; if deer see them, they will gallop away". It is also suggested that this quote has been misinterpreted, and rather being about an expression of beauty the quote is questioning who can determine how others feel and that there are many viewpoints; despite the beauty of the two courtesans, the animals still flee in fear when they approach. The quote finishes with "Among these four, who knows what is rightly beautiful in the world?", which I think helps see how the quote should really be used. On the fourth tile, there are two characters above the gate opening. These are Yan Men, and I presume refer to the Yanmen gateway through the Great Wall, see here, http://www.travelchinaguide.com/.../shanxi/yanmenguan.htm I guess this row refers to the story of Wang Zhaojun (one of the Four Great Beauties - see below) who travelled through the Great Wall to an arranged and politically inspired marriage. =The Four Beauties= Xi Shi (7th century BCE) said to be so entrancingly beautiful that fish would forget how to swim and sink away from the surface when she walks by. Xi Shi is said to be depicted by a stream washing clothes, is that what tiles #1 and #2 on the bottom row show?...if so, we have Xi Shi and Wang Zhaojun on the bottom row, so I guess the top row are the other two famed beauties. Wang Zhaojun (1st century BCE), so beautiful that her appearance would entice birds in flight to fall from the sky. Diaochan (3rd century AD), so luminously lovely that the moon itself would shy away in embarrassment when compared to her. and finally Yang Guifei (8th century AD) said to have a face that puts all flowers to shame. Category:Women Category:Three Beauties